When Francesco Aquilini bought the Vancouver Canucks in 2004, he knew he wanted to give Rogers Arena fans an experience they’d never had before at an NHL game.

This year’s Rogers Arena experience might have achieved just that, thanks to a pre-game and intermission light show anchored by a Digital Projection International (DPI) high-brightness system.

The result is projection technology at its aesthetic best, as the entire arena is temporarily transformed into a crowd-gripping canvas.

Epic Production Technologies of Winnipeg has been a partner of the Canucks since 2005, says vice president of sales Larry Darling. The team’s current ownership group “really understands how to increase game value,” he says, noting they upgraded the entertainment available in the two concourses this year.

Talk about replacing the game-day lighting system for player introductions and in-game displays started shortly after Aquilini took control of the team, Darling says.  The on-ice projections - part of what’s expected to be a much larger set of upgrades to Rogers Arena - were launched during the 2011-12 season.

Photos: Vancouver Canucks Score with Pre-Game Light Show

And the Canucks aren’t done with their upgrades, Darling speculates. “We’re optimistic they’re not finished.”

Epic installed four 30,000-lumen LIGHTNING 45 sx+ displays, with video content from Green Hippo Hippotizer servers, which are behind the control booth on the arena’s 500 level. The displays are split into segments by a Datapath X4 video wall processor, creating a 200-foot by 80-foot image on the ice.

Vancouver Canucks’ pre-game introductions

The projectors were installed close to each center half of the ice to help align the images with the arena. Epic placed them 90 feet above the ice to give sufficient room below the clock without creating an obstruction.

“We didn’t want to blind anyone with projector light and we also didn’t want to block their views,” Darling says. Most of the work was done from mid-August through early October, with the schedule slightly more compressed because of the Canucks’ deep playoff run.

The on-ice projection is complemented by projections on four scrims, each four stories in height and located at the rink’s corners, which deploy and retract several times during each game. The lightweight scrims travel 140 to 160 feet per minute and feature a 30 to 40 percent open weave, showing the images on both sides.

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D. Craig MacCormack

Craig MacCormack is a veteran journalist with more than 15 years experience covering local and national news and sports as well as architecture and engineering. He joined Commercial Integrator in January 2011. Follow him on Twitter: @CraigMacCormack.

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